Our Cats and All About Them Part 23

149.

"The cat knoweth whose lips she licketh."--HEYWOOD, 1562.

The first appears the most correct.

_What the good wife spares the cat eats._ Favourites are well cared for.

_When candles are out all cats are gray._ In the dark all are alike.

This is said of beauty in general.

_When the cat is away the mice will play._--"The Bachelor's Banquet,"

1603. Heywood's "Woman Killed with Kindness," 1607. When danger is past, it is time to rejoice.

_When the weasel and the cat make a marriage, it is very ill presage._ When enemies counsel together, take heed; when rogues agree, let the honest folk beware.

_When the maid leaves the door open, the cat's in fault._ It is always well to have another to bear the blame. The way to do ill deeds oft makes ill deeds done.

_Who shall hang the bell about the cat's neck?_--HEYWOOD, 1562.

"Who shall ty the bell about the cat's necke low?

Not I (quoth the mouse), for a thing that I know."

The mice at a consultation held how to secure themselves from the cat, resolved upon hanging a bell about her neck, to give warning when she was near; but when this was resolved, they were as far to seek; for who would do it?--R. Who will court danger to benefit others?

A Douglas in the olden time, at a meeting of conspirators, said he would "bell the cat." Afterwards the enemy was taken by him, he retaining the cognomen of "Archibald Bell-the-cat."

_You can have no more of a cat than its skin._ You can have no more of a man but what he can do or what he has, or no more from a jug than what it contains.

THE CAT OF SHAKESPEARE.

Shakespeare mentions the cat forty-four times, and in this, like nearly all else of which he wrote, displayed both wonderful and accurate knowledge, not only of the form, nature, habits, and food of the animal, but also the inner life, the disposition, what it was, of what capable, and what it resembled. How truly he saw either from study, observation, or intuitively knew, not only the outward contour of "men and things,"

but could see within the casket which held the life and being, noting clearly thoughts, feelings, aspirations, intents, and purposes, not of the one only, but that also of the brute creation.

How truthfully he alludes to the peculiar eyes of the cat, the fine mark that the pupil dwindles to when the sun rides high in the heavens! Hear Grumio in _The Taming of the Shrew:_

And so disfigure her with it, that she shall have no more eyes to see withal than a cat.

As to the food of the cat, he well informs us that at this distant period domestic cats were fed and cared for to a certain extent, for besides much else, he points to the fact of its love of milk in _The Tempest_, Antonio's reply to Sebastian in Act II., Scene 1:

For all the rest, They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk.

And in _King Henry the Fourth_, Act IV., Scene 2, of its pilfering ways, Falstaff cries out:

I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

While Lady Macbeth points to the uncertain, timid, cautious habits of the cat, amounting almost to cowardice:

Letting I dare not wait upon I would, Like the poor cat i' the adage.

and in the same play the strange superst.i.tious fear attached to the voice and presence of the cat at certain times and seasons:

Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed.

The line almost carries a kind of awe with it, a sort of feeling of "what next will happen?" He noted, also, as he did most things, its marvellous powers of observation, for in _Coriola.n.u.s_, Act IV., Scene 2, occurs the following:

Cats, that can judge as fitly.

and of the forlorn loneliness of the age-stricken male cat in _King Henry the Fourth_, Falstaff, murmuring, says:

I am as melancholy as a gib cat.

He marks, too, the difference of action in the lion and cat, in a state of nature:

A crouching lion and a ramping cat.

Of the night-time food-seeking cat, in _The Merchant of Venice_, old Shylock talks of the

...Slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than the wild cat.

In the same play Shylock discourses of those that have a natural horror of certain animals, which holds good till this day:

Some men there are love not a gaping pig, Some, that are mad if they behold a cat.

and further on:

As there is no firm reason to be rendered Why he cannot abide a gaping pig, Why he, a harmless necessary cat.

Note the distinction he makes between the wild and the domestic cat; the one, evidently, he knew the value and use of, and the other, its peculiar stealthy ways and of nature dread. In _All's Well that Ends Well_, he gives vent to his dislike; Bertram rages forth:

I could endure anything before but a cat, And now he's cat to me.

The feud with the wild cat intensifies in _Midsummer Night's Dream_; 'tis Lysander speaks:

Hang off, thou cat, thou burr, thou vile thing.

And Gremio tells of the untamableness of the wild cat, which he deems apparently impossible:

But will you woo this wild cat?

Romeo, in _Romeo and Juliet_, looks with much disfavour, not only on cats but also dogs; in fact, the dog was held in as high disdain as the cat:

And every cat and dog, And every little mouse, and every unworthy thing.

Here is Hamlet's opinion: